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Temporary Display of Annie Leibovitz’s Photographs

The State Hermitage’s Department of Contemporary Art is continuing its work to present works of art that have been donated to the museum. From 20 October 2018, there will be a temporary display in the General Staff building of photographs by Annie Leibovitz that have been presented to the museum as a gift from their creator.

Annie Leibovitz
1997/2012
Gift from Annie Leibovitz, 2018

Annie Leibovitz
2003, December
Gift from Annie Leibovitz, 2018

Annie Leibovitz
2002/2012
Gift from Annie Leibovitz, 2018

Annie Leibovitz
1988/2012
Gift from Annie Leibovitz, 2018

Annie Leibovitz
1994/2012
Gift from Annie Leibovitz, 2018

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Annie Leibovitz (born 1949) is one of the most successful photographers of the present day. She made her name with photographs of celebrities taken on assignments from magazines and advertising agencies. In her finest works, Leibovitz goes beyond the bounds of a commercial shoot, creating memorable, heart-stirring images of personalities and the age.

Beginning with coverage of life in the music industry for the magazine Rolling Stone, Leibovitz soon became one of the foremost portrait photographers and received high-priced, prestigious commissions from the “dictators” of style and fashion – the magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair. Politicians, stars of show business, civic activists, members of the intellectual elite and royalty have all found themselves in front of her lens. Leibovitz prefers not to work in the studio, but on location, having her models pose in a familiar, lived-in setting. In her finest portraits, background details become the chief witnesses, revealing more about the subject’s way of life and character.

Leibovitz is involved with the world of the society page and has herself repeatedly become its focus. The circumstances of her private and professional life, successes and failures in her work have been explored time and again by the tabloid press. The exhibition project “A Photographer’s Life” that was shown in the Hermitage in 2011 was devoted to the uneasy interweaving of public and private spheres, work and personal life. It was based on Leibovitz’s own domestic archive: shots of family and friends mixed in with commissioned portraits. In these frank photographic memoirs, images drawn from different spheres come together to form a contradictory whole, united only by Leibovitz’s professional camerawork. In memory of that exhibition, the photographer donated nine of her works to the museum.

The display has been created as part of the Hermitage 20/21 project that aims to collect, exhibit and study the work of contemporary artists.

The project is curated by Marina Shults, Deputy Head of Contemporary Art Department, and Daria Panaiotti, Contemporary Art Department, The State Hermitage. Museum.

The collection of photographs has been presented to the museum as a gift from their creator with the help of the Hermitage Museum Foundation (USA).